The Athletic’s Mike Vorkunov on Summer League Standouts & His NBA Dark Horse Teams

Usually when a draft class gets hyped this hard, one or two of the headliners quietly disappoint. That did not happen this summer.

All four of the top rookies showed up as advertised in Summer League, and Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic says the Rookie of the Year race is now a genuine toss-up.

"You have four legit candidates," Vorkunov said, "and then with how deep everyone says this draft class is, maybe there's someone else who comes out of the top four, too."

His breakdown was less about talent than about opportunity. AJ Dybantsa looks exactly like the big playmaking wing he was billed as, but Vorkunov flagged the obvious catch: sharing a roster with Trae Young and Anthony Davis means the counting stats will not pile up the way they will for others in this class.

Darryn Peterson projects as a good NBA guard, and Utah needs him to be a playmaker immediately.

The favorite, in Vorkunov's view, is Cam Boozer in Memphis. The reasoning is straightforward. Boozer will get the opportunity to put up big numbers on a roster without the same level of talent around him, and Vorkunov thinks he is simply ready.

"He just seems like really good and ready for the NBA," he said.

Then there is Caleb Wilson, who Vorkunov called dynamic and who has Chicago fans doing backflips in their driveways. The most encouraging part of his summer was the three-point shooting, which was not a big part of his game at North Carolina.

"He's probably the most exciting prospect to get to Chicago since like Derrick Rose," Vorkunov said. "That's how long it's been for them."

The bigger ask came next. Give us a team that does what the Knicks did last year, the one nobody is thinking about in July that ends up holding the Larry O'Brien trophy.

Vorkunov stalled beautifully, mostly by discovering mid-question that both TJ and Chris were celebrating birthdays that day and that he had arrived empty-handed.

"I am ashamed. I am disappointed. I am heartbroken that I do not have gifts for both of you," he said.

When he got to an answer, his first swing was Philadelphia. The lesson he took from New York was that continuity plus talent goes a long way, and the Sixers get year two of VJ Edgecombe and Tyrese Maxey together, a reasonable case for Joel Embiid staying healthy, and Jaylen Brown added to the group. He acknowledged that last part cuts against his own continuity argument.

He has questions about Cleveland, specifically about James Harden, who Vorkunov said was really exposed in the Eastern Conference finals. If the Cavaliers do not land LeBron James and Harden still has to carry that much, it gets harder as the East gets tougher.

Minnesota was tempting and then dismissed. The West is simply too dense, with San Antonio, Oklahoma City and Denver all in the way, and there is a roster complication in Payton Watson going unsigned.

His actual pick was the one hiding in plain sight, the team that nearly did the Knicks thing a year earlier.

"The one thing that we're all sleeping on that could be the Knicks of next year is the team that was almost the Knicks of the previous year, the Pacers," Vorkunov said. "If Haliburton's back and he's healthy, we shouldn't forget about him."

TJ approved of that one immediately, which is not surprising. Tyrese Haliburton has been his guy for a while.